Analyzing Data Sets Using BigQuery and Google Sheets

Why is an analysis of data important? Why Big Data? What is Google Analytics? What is BigQuery? Why querying data? All these questions arise in our minds seeing the topic of the article.

Here, comes the answer to all whys...

Big Data is a set of large and complex data structured as well as unstructured which cannot be processed traditionally to get results. Hence, the question arises as to how we can extract output out of a certain data set.

Big data usually comprises of data sets with beyond the imagination, size and which is not possible for commonly used software tools to manage, and process within a particular time frame. Big data encapsulates unstructured, semi-structured and structured data, but the main focus lies on unstructured data.

As organizations assemble terabytes of compound data, tools become essential to house and make better sense of the organization's information. This is where comes the existence of BigQuery, to help data analysts deal with large sets of data but not all of us are magicians to handle such vast data. We use spreadsheets for performing ad-hoc analysis.

With the Sheets data connector for BigQuery, sharing and analyzing of large datasets from BigQuery can be done right from within the spreadsheet. Up to 10,000 rows of data can be connected from BigQuery into Sheets (with a simple SQL statement that a data analyst can provide), and analyzing it using either the Explore feature or by creating pivot tables or charts in the spreadsheet.

The owner of the file can control share permissions to limit who can view, edit or share the data. People with the “edit” access in Sheets and the "view" access to the BigQuery table can refresh the dataset. By combining these two tools together, contributors and other stakeholders can view up to 10,000 rows of data from BigQuery in a simple and familiar interface. Thus collaboration and insight sharing become easier which enables faster decision making.

The data connector helps to :

• Streamline the reporting and workflow of the dashboard.

• Without having to create additional CSV exports ensuring a single source of truth for data.

• Making a familiar spreadsheet interface for the partners, analysts and the stakeholders

This feature is available to the G Suite Business, G Suite Enterprise, G Suite for Education, G Suite Enterprise for Education, and Drive Enterprise customers while it is non-available for the users of G Suite Basic and G Suite for nonprofits. BigQuery has changed the outlook of the people for analysing such huge amount of data and giving the output within such an elapsed time frame.

Google has indeed been successful with the analytics of data with BigQuery and getting the result through Google Sheets. Interlinking of these two mammoths has been very clever and out of the box approach thereby making it easy for the organizations to perform more efficiently and helping them to make faster decisions.